The First One

Well hi everyone! This is my first blog ever, and I feel sort of bad because I am not currently in Germany yet. I am, in fact, in my living room watching Juno. However, after luring you here under false pretenses, I will give you a brief summary of what has been going on concerning Germany. I received the Congress-Bundestag Youth Exchange Scholarship (CBYX), and now I am going to Germany for a year. I applied in January, and had to get all of my stuff together for the application in two weeks, because I discovered the program really late. There was a snow day the day that the letters of recommendations were due, which caused a rather large freakout on my end. But everything got in on time, and I was accepted as a semi-finalist. Then there was an interview in Mansfield, where all the semi-finalists were split up into two groups and we had individual interviews, then a group activity. The individual one was rather painful, because they went alphabetically. My last name is Tyznik. Very rarely do the other last 6 letters of the alphabet show their faces. That day was no exception. However, my interview time finally came and I babbled, talk about books, gave the wrong number for the amount of people in the world (I was off by about 4 to 5 billion), and then I was done. The group activity was fun- no talking was allowed. Overall, I think it took about 3 1/2 hours (ish). That was in February. There was a Facebook page for those of us waiting, and basically we just sat around and talked about how anxious we were. The final news came in April, which to you may not seem like a long time, but two months is a really, really long time to wait for news that will decide the fate of the next year of your life. I got a call at about 9:00 at night, and I started crying/laughing/hiccuping and the lady who called me was alarmed and tried to congratulate me while subtly getting off the line. The only person who was home was my brother, Colin, and I was screaming and jumping, which made him extremely uncomfortable. I then called everyone I could think of, and spent the next hour on the phone. I then ran down the road to meet my mom, and at 9:30 at night we were both  jumping up and down and screaming in hushed tones on the sidewalk.
Five were accepted from Ohio, and there 50 overall from the AFS portion of CBYX (acronyms are fun, aren't they?). So far, we have had a Pre-Departure Orientation, which taught me what to do in the case I get sexually assaulted in a foreign country. Good stuff. And I have done two conference calls, which involve the fun beginning of 'Who Can Shout the Loudest for Roll Call'. It really is delightful, especially those times when it randomly stops and we get half our information.  Apparently there is punctuation that implies sarcasm, and I have yet to figure out how to get that onto my keyboard. But I'm looking.
I leave in September, but first I'll go to D.C. for four days and have a Gateway Orientation and meet some Congress folk. I have no idea where I'm going- my medical application was just accepted by Germany on Friday (it's Sunday), so now my name will be fought over by hoards of hosts families. I will do my best to keep you all updated, which is probably just my mom- hi mom!- but nothing is really happening right now. Obviously that did not stop me from writing a small novel, but hey, it's a disclaimer to your boredom.
Until next time,
The German Ginger